Darkness was coming on rapidly, and all of the boys were beginning to despair when suddenly Dick gave a shout of joy.
"The shore, boys! The shore at last!"
"Where?" came from all of the others.
"Over to our left. Come on!"
The others followed Dick willingly and in less than half a minute found themselves on solid earth once more, but at some point where the ground was little more than a stretch of flat meadow land.
"Hurrah!" shouted Sam. "How good to be on land once more!"
"Perhaps we might have been on land long ago if we had turned to the left," observed Frank. "We may have been skirting the shore for half the afternoon!"
"Never mind, we are here at last so don't let's grumble," said Tom.
"What's that ahead, a barn?"
"Some kind of a building," answered Dick. "Let us go forward and investigate."
They did so, and found a half tumbled down building, which had once been used for the storage of meadow hay and also as a boathouse. The door was gone and the window broken out, and the snow lay on the floor to the depth of an inch or more.